Little train engine's fate to be decided on Monday

The popular Bellevue Park train engine that's fascinated children for more than 40 years will stay where it is, if City Council approves recommendations to be brought before it on Monday night.

However, none of the recommendations from the City's Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee clear the way for youngsters to again climb onto the old locomotive.

City Council will vote on recommendations that include keeping the locomotive where it is “due to its cultural significance as a former play apparatus from 1967 to 2006.”

Other suggestions call for:

- Designating the locomotive and property surrounding it under the Ontario Heritage Act.

- Restoring the engine to its 1943 colours or to the colour it was when relocated to the park in 1967.

- Contracting a landscape architect to design permanent decorative fencing and landscaping for the site.

- Installing signage depicting the engine’s history.

- Including the resulting total cost of $31,350 in the 2009 budget as a supplementary item.

Council is also being advised that site work should be designed so the engine could be covered with a shelter in the future.

The committee refrained from trying to reverse recent history, recommending instead that "The locomotive not be reintroduced as a piece of playground equipment due to the liability issues."

Use of the old engine as playground equipment ended in 2006 following a risk management inspection by the City’s insurer.

The locomotive - known as Porter to many - was deemed to be a risk because it didn’t meet Canadian Standards Association criteria for playground equipment.

Since then, efforts have been made to determine what should be done with the relic, formerly known as Algoma Steel 10 Engine.

Background material provided to City councillors includes a letter from retired Algoma Steel engineer Dennis Baldwin.

“The Porter fireless locomotive in Bellevue Park was one of two purchased by Arthur G. McKee of Cleveland, Ohio as part of their Contract No. 1804 in 1942 to build Algoma's No. 5 Blast Furnace,” Baldwin wrote.

“The two locomotives were used on the east track of the blast furnace highline to pull a coke car each from the M5 coke conveyor to any one of Blast Furnaces 5, 4, 3, 2 and possibly No. 6 also.

“The east track diverged near the M5 conveyor into two tracks known as the coke loading spur.

“I have not seen any photographs either of the locomotives when in service, but I suspect that they would have been painted an ‘attractive shade of medium blast furnace black.

“Possibly they may have had either white or yellow lettering and numbers."

Mr. Balwdin adds: “Subject to confirmation, I believe that one of the coke cars still exists in storage on the 5.F. Highline.

“They remained in service, pulled by 25-ton General Electric four-wheel diesel locomotives, until some time in the 1980s.

“During an economy move, a portable conveyor was installed to transfer coke from the M5 to the electric transfer cars on the west track.

“The transfer cars, two of which date back to 1918, are still used when pellets are lifted from the ore dock with one of the ore bridges.”

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Councillor Manzo cannot be reached by e-mail, but you can phone or fax him at 945-9971.

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